Machinations I: Hunt
by Guildenstern's Hat
Summary: Cidaal Cane, an imperial inquisitor who finds himself more and more removed from the ambitions of his masters, descends on the forest planet Kashak Xol to retrieve an ancient artifact and to discover the fate of the last inquisitor sent after it.


The cabin-space, which lurched slightly as the ship slipped back into _real-space_ , floated somewhere beneath the Force-being's awareness. The nearby world was a candle of force-energy suspended in the muted tendrils of spiritually navigable space connecting every individual living thing on that planet with every living thing in the galaxy. Although a human body, aged in its early thirties in standard-years, sat cross-legged on the deck of the small ship, its true nature was now outside of it, through it, feeling out into that immenseness which connected all things with all other things. This individual, this packet of the Force once distilled into a single being, but now immense and searching, spanning the planet and its living things below, collapsed the tendrils of consciousness which whipped out from the human body sitting on the deck back into it, dragging a part of the immensity back into a world-anchored frame.

A sleek, flat-headed droid shuffled into the cabin-space.

"We have arrived in orbit around Kashak Xol, sir," the droid said in a gentle, synthesized voice.

"Prepare the coordinates and receive clearance to land," the dark-haired human said softly, only partially anchored to the world, still imbibing the coils of life-energy which teased his attention away, coaxing him out of his crude form and back into the expanse to probe its nature, which eluded the wisest beings in the history of the galaxy. The droid bowed slightly and waddled back out of the doorway.

Cidaal Cane brought himself back into the world fully, slowly feeling the cacophony of matter return—the beat of his heart, his need for breath, the droning ship, and the dull ache behind the cybernetic implant in his right eye. The ache, or so his doctors told him, was a result of poor neural grafting. He had come to regard the dull throb as a welcome reminder, a sign-post of the material world from-which he often withdrew. It is partially for this reason that he refused the doctors when they offered to correct the botched neural graft. Now, however, his strength in the Force had far exceeded even the enhanced vision provided by the smooth, black and vaguely rhomboid implant.

Cidaal drew himself up and prepared to touch down on the planet whose inhabitants he had previously mingled with, if only through the life-force which attracted between them. For it was through this displacement of the self, this dissemination through the Force that Cane could acquire his purpose on the jungle world below. He seated himself next to the droid pilot and produced from his breast pocket a small holocom. He flipped with his index finger through the files which made up his briefing. A holo-image of the planet, green and backwater Kashak Xol, at the lonely end of the Parlemian trade route at the extremity of the Tingel Arm, rotated lazily along with metrics regarding its location, mass, axis, climate, atmospheric composition and other minutiae. Its friendly atmosphere and more or less stable weather, not to mention its luscious verdance, were hidden from the galaxy at large so far out on the Parlemian. Were it located in the Mid-Rim or the Core, Cidaal mused, it would have been a resort world millennia ago, like Raxus Prime in her youth. And like that unhappy world, would probably also have become a poisoned scrap-heap whose only visible land-features were the decaying hulls of slagged-out ships, lapped by seas of sizzling coolant and other toxic wastes.

The next image was his target—not specifically designated as such, of course, but Cidaal had divined as much in his meditations concerning Kashak Xol. A hologram of a human female—an Inquisitor, like him—rotated slowly in three dimensions. Nivas Karth, birth date unknown, or so her file said, was entrusted with retrieving a certain artifact from some ruins on Kashak Xol which ringed the single, tiny space-port. Her masters, who were also Cidaal's masters, suspected that she had either run into difficulty and become marooned or killed, or, more likely, sought the artifact for herself, which is not uncommon among the agents sent to retrieve such things, especially if it is their intrinsic power for which they are sought.

Cane had learned differently, or had begun to learn, during his meditations. Only his search for Karth would confirm the glimpses he had gathered. The next image was a reproduction, based on surviving descriptions, of the artifact in question—the right hemisphere of a stylized humanoid mask, once bronze in color, of unknown material. What was known was interesting enough. The mask had belonged to a minor Sith sorcerer—Darth Greath—who had lived during the time of the Sith Civil War and who was said to have perfected the transfer of a force-being's consciousness, in part or in whole, into inanimate objects. The process is similar, or so he had heard, to the process by which Sith had for generations cheated physical death, or infused their consciousnesses into the data-crystals of holocrons.  
The mask was interesting, if mundane. Its features were generic and mathematically proportioned, perhaps pleasing to most humans and near-humans, certainly not malformed or exaggerated in any way. It was described as bronze in color, and the holoimage reproduction reflected this. Its surface was scoured in sections of deep grooves, the largest of which ran vertically down the greater part of the face and nose, interrupted by a set that arced over the semi-circular eye-holes to the brow forming a concentric series. A similar, yet horizontal, set distinguished the lips, which were full and vaguely feminine. It was clear this was a theatrical piece, not misplaced in the long tradition of garish ornament the proud and foolish Sith were known to have adorned themselves in.

The droid had been speaking, but Cidaal had not been paying attention. The ship was touching down.

"Welcome to Rijocca Spaceport, sir, may I be of service?" a silvery protocol droid offered as Cane descended the boarding ramp from the ship.

"Yes, perhaps you can," Cane said gently as he produced the holocom. "I am looking for a colleague, an archaeologist of sorts, like myself, who passed through here a standard month ago."

The droid bent down slightly to study the holo-image of the human female. Possessed of braided red hair and a thin face, her features were wholly unremarkable except for the cruel eyes, Cane thought.

"Oh dear," the droid said after a moment, "yes, she was in quite a hurry. She rented a speeder and went east, into the ruins I imagine, and never returned, at least to my knowledge."

The droid looked off into space for a moment, searching its recent memory.

"My schedules say that the speeder that she rented is still out, sir. I do hope nothing has happened."  
"As do I," Cane offered, "thank you." The droid bowed slightly and shuffled off across the dusty tarmac where a few ships sat. Rijocca Spaceport, a facility hardly deserving of the name, consisted of a series of large, duracrete domes adjacent to the landing area, surrounded on all sides by a tall, ancient jungle which spanned the entire equator of the nearly oceanless world, and far above the subtropical zones. Cane followed far behind the droid as it wandered into the open-air hub.

"I'd like to rent a speeder," he said, causing the Klatooinian clerk to turn slowly. Cane studied the alien quickly. He had seen many Klatooinians, but none so far away from the territory of their Hutt masters. The humanoids' faces were vaguely leonine with a small, cat-like nose, flabby jowls and small eyes which squinted beneath the weight of a large brow. Klatooinians rarely could be described as friendly-looking, although most were docile enough, especially for a species associated with the Hutts. The Klatooinian, too, briefly noted Cane's appearance. A tall, slender, dark-haired human with slightly hollow cheeks, a thin, long nose and a robust jaw that he suspected humans found aristocratic. He wore a simple dark-gray tunic and trousers stuffed into knee-high black boots. Around his shoulders hung a short black cloak, open in the front and slung over his right shoulder. The symmetry of Cane's face was interrupted by the implant, which he had noticed forced many beings to look into it instead of his "real" eye, perhaps not out of disrespect or even curiosity—implants like his were not uncommon in any species—but because most humanoid species expected two symmetrical eyes to speak into. That is, when they spoke honestly, of course.

The clerk named a sum to rent the speeder, which Cane did not care to listen to as he passed his credit chit to the Klatooinian who scanned it and withdrew the required amount.

"Would you like a map, or…?" the Klatooinian asked, extending a key-card.

"That won't be necessary," Cane said, turning with key-card in hand. He would need no maps to find his prey. In the preceding moments his attentions had been gripped by a tremendous pressure—dark and predatory in nature—which would guide him toward it. Whatever Nivas Karth had done, or had done to her, she was now an irresponsible nexus of dark-side energy, seething with cold rage and a parasitic jealousy. The world of the Force which Cane allowed himself to slip into as he walked, bent toward the nexus, funneling the possible paths of his fate into one general direction. Such was the nature of Force-beings, drawn to one another, fated to intersect and together change the shape of the future. How this change came about was always different, and interpreted differently by each, but all Force adepts accepted the fating element of the Force, the determining aspect of history it represented.

Beings like Cane, and Karth for that matter, understood also that it was this element which moved the galaxy, shaped its great events—since for Force beings events cannot be great otherwise than the manner in which they are dictated by the Force—and pushed the Force along its cycled through its true nature to matter and back to its true nature, what lesser beings called life and death.

The spaceport was near empty, with a few miserable beings wandering this way and that, mostly aliens. Cane was somewhat surprised, however, to see two or three human security personnel not connected with the Empire in any way. Humans were few and far between in the Outer-Rim, and not just because they were almost always unwelcome. Humans tended to stay in the Core and Mid-Rim, where their population—and power—were naturally greater. Humans who strayed to the Outer-Rim were usually misfits in one way or another—smugglers, drug-dealers, debtors, slavers and enslaved, and generally avoiding attention from the Core, the Mid-Rim, the Empire and Humans at large.

Cane disliked the humanocentric policies of the Empire which allowed it to expropriate alien-held businesses and sanction slavery of non-humans in the Outer-Rim and the Corporate Sector. Rulers were natural, he thought, selected and fated by the force and the laws of nature, which are to an extent the same thing, but the place of humans was artificial, decadent, self-assured and not supported by the natural selection of betters, and so was fated to come crashing down. Whether the Empire, certainly the political shell of the general rule of the Darkside, just as the decadent Republic had been of the "Light", would survive this fall was uninteresting to him. The Empire was after all just that, the political trappings of the rule of a sect of force-sensitives—the Sith—and would court the same fate as had its predecessor, and its predecessors before it. These were thoughts Cane allowed himself to have far out on the dying trail of the Parlemian, where he could rest his constant defenses from Forceful beings with whom he often came into contact. The Empire had collected many like him—not Sith, and without the possibility to become Sith, but beings trained in the Dark side of the Force by the thousands, and utilized in all levels of the empire's machinery, from military spies and assassins to Inquisitors-turned-relic hunters. How unwise it had been, he thought as he slipped into the driver's seat of the shoddy, ancient landspeeder, that in their arrogance the Sith had penetrated their Empire, supposedly the embodiment of order, with beings trained specifically to utilize those emotions and dispositions which would, by their very nature, turn against them. Perhaps they expected this. Or perhaps, like the Jedi, drunk with the ascendance of their sect to galactic power, the Sith were now just as decadent and careless. It did not matter either way, he thought. Any being as powerful as he was with the Force could feel something on the horizon—a fall, a crescendo, he did not know what, but the horizon of the force sped away from the observer, clouding the future—just as it had done in the waning years of the Republic. The Sith almost certainly have their own interpretations of this transformation, no doubt seeing themselves as the event's progenitors or even its sole object, but whatever they theorize they must see it.  
Cane piloted the landspeeder away from Rijocca into the dense forest at high speed, the immense greenery rushing past in a constant blur, punctuated by tall, black-barked tree-trunks as they flashed by the speeder. The navcomputer, responding to the coordinates he had entered, confirmed in the mundane world what he had known through the Force. _She hadn't even left the site_ , he thought in disgust. Cane had no need of theories now, for he all but knew for certain what had become of Nivas Karth. As if to respond to his thought in the affirmative, he was made aware that something—once someone—was feeling him through the Force, attempting to divine his nature and his mission. He opened himself, both to the Force and the interloper, making himself as visible and knowable in the force as it now was. Stretching out into the everpresence he anticipated the positions of trees and rocks by seconds, piloting the dodgy craft slightly this way and that until the navcomputer scrawled final arrival directions which Cane did not need to know that his quarry lie ahead.

Seen through the force, the ancient tomb ahead, weathered for thousands of years into a cairn of strewn boulders nearly unrecognizable as architecture, was like a violent sunrise whose vicious coronae lapped the forest around it like the flames of a crucible, drowning their Force-signature as a planet is drown in the glare of its primary. Cane concealed himself in the world for now, making himself invisible to the being inside, a dwarf in the Force, a near non-entity. Walking by Karth's derelict speeder, he stood in front of the tomb's canted mouth, briefly setting his eyes on the remains of various small creatures—some recent—deducing, both from the smell in the air and the fact that the carcasses were largely intact, that it was their blood which had been fed on. If his suspicions needed any confirmation, they had gotten it. He passed under the lopsided lintel and descended into the tight, dark, rough-hewn passageway, all the while imbibing the tendrils of dark power billowing up the shaft.

Where the tunnel curved downward for a few meters, Cane could perceive a bluish-green light, artificial in origin no doubt, issuing most certainly from the mausoleum chamber of Darth Greath. As he ducked and scraped his way deeper into the half-collapsed tunnel, his worldly senses began to catch up to what he had been sensing through the Force. Feral noises, matching the unrestrained and animal nature of the admittedly powerful entity ahead, became audible, as well as the smell of blood, both fresh and decayed. He pushed on for the final few meters.

He moved over the creature's shadow in the collapsed entry-way and ducked beneath the fallen lintel which blocked his view of the chamber. He passed into the cold, spheroid space, bathed in the eerie blue-green glow of two ancient mounted lighting devices, and drew himself up to full height, his face contorting in a mix of disgust, disappointment and morbid intrigue.

Still cloaked in the material world, he studied the creature that wore Karth's skin as it slouched, back turned, on the other side of a long sarcophagus devouring something, no doubt an animal like the ones outside, grunting and slurping, tearing occasionally. Cane's worst suspicion had indeed been fulfilled, and he began to feel a profound sense of disappointment fill him. _Half way across the galaxy for this_ he thought. In an instant Cane unleashed his being, flaring out into the Force like a chemical fire, startling and confusing the Karth-creature which whirled around and dropped to the floor of the tomb, scampering backward on all fours halfway up the wall where it hung for a moment. The entity studied Cane through Karth's green, blood-shot eyes, tilting its head left and right in avian fashion. On the right side of its gaunt, varicose face hung the mask of Darth Greath.

The situation was obvious to Cane, who now discerned the being's nature openly, observing its aspects in the Force. Whether seduced by power or some residual will of the dead Sith sorcerer, the poor fool had been overtaken by the allure of the dark side, atomized and scattered away by the aspects of Greath which survived him. Greath, too, was long gone. He had not anchored his consciousness into the mask as he apparently hoped to do, or at least if he did it did not last. Centuries after his dissipation into the Force, only those avatars of his blind hate, lust, jealousy and secret pangs of his fear of the end remained clinging to the alloys of the relic sunk into the flesh of the former Karth. Such an amateurish spectacle, both from the weakling inquisitor and the pathetic dead wizard contorted into a forceful homunculus before him, sapped him of interest and patience. At first he believed he would put Karth out of her misery, but now he hoped something of her remained in the tortured beast to be finally annihilated at his hand.

In a flash Cane swiped the lightsaber from his belt and activated it, its yellow blade thrumming and flickering as it hung at his side, bathing the tomb in its erratic light and, having dwarfed the dim glow of the tomb, mimicked the two beings' presence in the force. If the golem had previously been a sunrise of dark energy, Cane now appeared as a quasar of terrifying power, capable at any moment of enslaving the Force in myriad ways, or unleashing a lifetime's worth of sword-fighting skill augmented half way through by the weight of the dark side.

Just as cane prepared to advance on the sad creature, he perceived a shift in the temperature of the room and became aware of the soft, feline growl rattling from Karth's throat. The air lost all hint of warmth and Cane's interest piqued again. Feeling out the deformation before him he could sense it growing stronger, sending its own feelers through him and causing him to shiver imperceptibly.

 _More powerful than I suspected…_

A gargle rose in the beast's throat as something like words began to take shape.

"Your thoughts betray you," the entity inhabiting the human inquisitor's form communicated. Though it seemed to be speaking, the creature made only guttural croaks while the words Cane heard echoed forward and back, unplaceable in the tomb except from the general miasma pervading the place.

"It has enough sense to mimic speech," Cane said smugly in a deliberate attempt to goad it, "but not enough to fear."

"I _am_ fear," it retorted, cocking its head wildly.

"I suspect you are," Cane said, stepping forward slowly, "Greath's fear. And his hatred. And his ignorance…"

In an instant Cane leapt atop the sarcophagus to better dive at the ghoul, when to his pleasant surprise he was forced to lock his blade against that of Karth's blue saber, the hilt of which clutched by Karth's scabby, twisted arm under the command of the Greath's apparition, still clinging to the tomb's back wall like a spider. Cane searched through the Force in a series of micro-second probings and felt the creature do the same, like puffs of wind in all directions the two discovered and calculated outcomes and defenses, formulating and abandoning battle-plans in mere fractions of a second.

Finally, Cane broke the lock with a forward flip, attempting to come down on his prey, but the creature was at least as cunning and dove away, scurrying in a semi-circle around the sarcophagus, now facing Cane. Karth's arms and legs had all been dislocated, allowing them to be arranged like the legs of a grotesque crab animated by sheer will, the fearsome blade of Karth's upturned saber forming some great claw. As interesting as this had become, Cane knew he did not face an inquisitor, much less the spirit of a long-dead Sith, but a cheap copy, an imprint of the feelings which empowered Greath and survived him through the Force. Its animal nature hinted as much. While vampirism and cannibalism were common among those beings either influenced by the dark or subsumed by the dark-side entirely, this creature, this presence could not survive otherwise. Nor had Greath created a Force-wraith—a powerful residual of the emotions and abilities of a dark-side adept—but merely a primal imprint, a suite of hate and fear converging on a nexus in the force—the mask. Therefore he would take no pleasure in dispatching this _thing_. There was none to be had. Hunting animals, corporeal or not, is a sport for lesser beings.

Cane launched himself at the instrumentalized body of Nivas Karth, swatting the creature into a defensive position and unleashing a flurry of faking glances, nicking and burning its skin here and there, feeling the fearful aspect of its makeup rising to the fore. Despite its being caught off guard, a killing-stroke was not foreseeable in the moment, owing perhaps to the power of Greath or Karth or both, but most certainly to the clarity of foresight the dark-side awards the eyes which see only prey and opportunity. Cane did not relent in his pummeling, but glimpsed a moment which may come to pass and trusted it, deliberately faulting but a few millimeters, and shifting his weight off center imperceptibly. The feint worked, and the creature sensed the opening and took it in a flash, going on the offensive, allowing Cane to drop to his knees and with one semi-circular slash disarm the creature literally, and with another such standing slash severed its legs, slamming the dismembered torso against the wall with a terrifying force-push and bearing down on it with all the malice at his disposal.

The Karth-creature's head, which was the only part Cane had not willed press to the wall, was whipping about precisely like the panicked beast it was. Despite its sternum and ribcage snapping and cracking beneath the tremendous pressure Cane willed onto them, the creature managed a high-pitched screech which flew in all directions, dopplering with the frenetic, whipping convulsion of its half-human head. _Let's end this_ he thought as the tendrils of the dark-side snaked through him and into the homunculus, seeping slowly into it from all angles and orifices. As Cane powered down the blade of his lightsaber, and in sudden realization of the only outcome the entire universe of possibilities had collapsed into, the creature suddenly stopped its flailing and screeching and looked stark into Cane's eyes, now burning yellow with the favor of the dark-side. Its head did not move as it unleashed one final screech and the moment came to a crescendo as Cane violently jerked both arms downward, collapsing the creature into itself and into the wall behind it causing a shockwave to ripple through the tomb which shook pebbles from its ceiling. The creature's scream had stopped instantly, but its broken body remained pressed into the tomb wall.

Cane exhaled slowly as the coils of darkness receded into him. After a long moment he opened his eyes to look on his work. The mask lay on the floor, while the lifeless carcass of Nivas Karth, legless and armless, and unrecognizably crushed, peeled off the wall and struck the floor with a wet, sickening slap. His boots echoed in the silent chamber as he strode forward, bending down to claim the trophy.

 _All for this..._

He held the mask in his hand, the hand which had crushed its manifestation, and he could feel its hate. The relic looked close enough to the recreation on the holos, except for the nicks and gouges which crossed its deep grooves. He could feel its allure, and could understand why a weak fool like Karth could have mistook its calls for an offer of power. He soon undid the clasp of his cloak and whipped it off his shoulders, wrapping the mask in its folds and tucking it under his arm as he made for the mouth of the passageway. Such things did not tempt him. Not the trinkets and experiments of dead dogmatic priests, nor their tools and weapons which he so often retrieved. These were the pursuits of arrogant mystics, perhaps worse than the Jedi of whom he was once a part. They could not impart power, merely glimpses of it, and he is ever a fool who chases shadows. Nevertheless, his masters would have their trinket. He made the climb out of the tomb.


End file.
